Efficiency
The advantages of a scintillation counter are its efficiency and possible high precision and counting rates. These latter attributes result from the extremely short duration of the light flashes, from about 10-9 (organic plastic scintillators) to 10-6 (inorganic plastic scintillators) seconds.
Spectroscopy
The intensity of the flashes and the amplitude of the output voltage pulse are proportional to the energy of the radiation. Therefore, scintillation counters can be used to determine the energy and the number of the exciting particles (or gamma photons). For gamma spectrometry, the most common detectors include sodium iodide plastic scintillator counters and high-purity germanium detectors.
The plastic scintillator has a higher energy resolution than a proportional counter, allowing more accurate energy determinations. On the other hand, if a perfect energy resolution is required, we have to use a germanium-based detector.